[TW Guide] MTW: The Danes (Early)

[Garbarsardar]

Author: Morble
Original Thread: Not Available

MTW: The Danes (Early)

The Danes (Early)

The thing to remember about the Danes is that they love a good fight. You start off in the Early Period as more of a tribal chieftain than a king. You only own Denmark, and have less than 200 men. You are going to have economic problems until you can set up trade routes. But once you do, you will dominate. Of the provinces around you, Denmark has 2 trade resources (and a valor add to longboats), Sweden has 3 trade resources, Norway, Pomerania, and Livonia have 2 each, and Lithuania has 3. There is no greater concentration of trading goods anywhere on the map, with the possible exception of Egyptian lands. So, your first order of business must be to capture the nearby trade-heavy provinces and then build longboats to cover the entire map.

The Danes also have some great early special builds. Vikings need only a fort, while landsmenn need only a keep. Landsmenn are the stronger unit. Jomsvikings are even stronger; they need a swordsmith, but are well worth the effort. Thralls, on the other hand totally suck at melee. They have a good charge, but are otherwise worthless. I think it’s better to build Slav warriors and woodsmen once you capture Prussia and Lithuania, instead of wasting precious builds on thralls.

Build a landsmenn on your first turn, along with a watchtower. On your second turn, send everything you have into Sweden, while starting on a shipbuilder and another landsmenn in Denmark. The rebels will retreat, but you will not have a rebellion in Denmark because your loyalty is still high enough. Sweden will rebel on the next turn.

Continue to build landsmenn in Denmark until you can you have the development to start building longboats. Build a watchtower, then a fort, in Sweden. Leave a single unit—I suggest the spearmen, if their loyalty is high enough—in Denmark to prevent a surprise invasion from the HRE. Accept any and all offers of alliance. You will be staying out of world politics for as long as possible, so it doesn’t matter much who you ally with. You would prefer to stay on good terms with the HRE, Poles, and Russians, though.

Put down the Swedish revolt, and either kill or release the captives, depending on whether you want to increase your king’s dread or happiness ratings, respectively. The Swedes will likely revolt again for several turns in a row. Simply follow the same procedure. I prefer to sneak in a build for a single archer unit during this time. Otherwise, I only build landsmenn out of Denmark.

There will be many battles against rebels to come. The Danish battle plan is very simple. On the attack, spread your units out in a long battleline. Put your archer unit slightly ahead of them, and put your royal cav ahead of the battleline, far out on the flank. You just need to advance in an orderly fashion, maintaining your battleline. When you come close, the rebels will frequently break order to send one or more units in a charge. Try not to get caught downhill from an enemy charge, but this isn’t that important here, since your landsmenn are superior to most rebel forces. Landsmenn don’t have a great charge themselves, but are excellent melee troops for this period. Once you have made melee contact, march the units on either side of the contact forward, then have them wheel and attack to the rebel unit’s rear. The rebels will rout. Use your cav to give chase, and redirect your landsmenn to their next victim.

Stunting works well when you have a long battleline. Instead of marching everyone straight forward, so that every unit meets another head-on, rush only every other unit on the line forward in a charging attack. The units that stayed in position on the original battleline can now be directed at an angle, behind the landsmenn rushing forward, so that these new attackers will meet the rebels on the rebel flank. The poor rebel target will rout within seconds.

On defense, deploy your landsmenn along any hillside and put the archers slightly in front. Since almost all the land in Scandinavia is very hilly, you should not have much trouble finding a good defensive spot. Defending a province is the main reason to take the time out to build an archer unit. Some rebel armies will have carls or huscarls with them. An archer unit on a hilltop prevents these advanced rebel troops from ever being a problem, since your arrows will cut them down to manageable size before the rebels can get anywhere near to melee contact.

In general, swing your cav out wide, and position it behind the rebel battleline. Since the only cav you have is headed by your king and princes, you really don’t want to melee much with your RKs. (You can build Viking raider cav with a horse farm, but it’s not worth the effort, since you’ll soon be in Asia and can build Steppe cav there.) Just positioning units behind the rebel lines will scare their combat troops.

You can occasionally send in your RKs to perform a charge to the enemy rear, if you note that one of your melees is having trouble. Use close formation for your RK charge instead of wedge, though, because you don’t want to blithely risk your royalty. Otherwise, just hold your cav in the enemy rear as a threat and a morale-buster, then send them off to chase routers. You can build up some serious valor points in your royals just by collecting a lot of hapless rebel captives. In fact, you want to catch as many captives as you can, because confiscated rebel lands will be your main source of income until you can get longboats built.

Once you have enough men to pacify Sweden and Denmark, invade Norway with your entire stack (except a placeholder in Denmark). If you’re feeling cocky, you can even do this before you get Sweden’s loyalty up to 100%, although you risk having to divide your forces this way. Once you win in Norway, you probably won’t have enough men to maintain loyalty there, so I retreat everyone to Sweden, and let Norway rebel. On the next turn, the Norwegians will be the attackers, and I plunk my stack back down on Norway to beat them again. Until Swedish loyalty is high enough, you will spend each turn bouncing your stack back and forth between Norway and Sweden, defeating a rebellion force in each year.

Once I have two princes, I prefer to let one of my princes lead the battles, and send my king to rest and administrate from Denmark. Your first king will not be around much longer, and it is better to plump up the battle rating of your prince. You should be able to gain at least a command star during this time.

Also, note that the size of each rebellion is proportionate to the number of troops you have in the province that turn. Using judicious measure, you can leave some number of troops in Norway, for example, to get a bigger rebellion, and more income from captured lands when you win. If you misjudge, and get a huge rebellion, it’s still probably OK, because your troops by now have earned some valor adds, and they will chew up the rebels. Note that this option availability declines the longer you hold the province and the natives become more accustomed to your rule.

Once you have your first longboat built, you will be able to invade Pomerania. This means it is time to stop fooling around in Scandinavia, and set to work on building an empire. Secure the loyalties in your Scandinavian provinces to 100% or better, then send your army to Pomerania.

Most likely the rebels will retreat to Prussia, and you will assault the fort in Pomerania on the next turn. You should immediately build a port there, so that your army can return home for an emergency. After that, build up your trade in Pomerania. Once Pomerania is pacified, invade Prussia. You can now employ the same strategy that you used in Scandinavia: remove your army and let one province rebel, then defend against the rebellion on the next turn, and let the other province rebel. Continue until one of the provinces stays loyal even with only 1 unit garrisoned there. Then invade Lithuania, and repeat the rebel/defend process with Prussia and Lithuania.

Invade Livonia next, to secure the two trade resources there, then work your way across Asia. Be sure to leave a rebel province next to the Russians, Muscovy is good for this, so that the Russians have room to expand. As long as the Russians can focus on conquering a rebel province, they will not pay much attention to you. Otherwise, the Russians will attack you at an inconvenient time.

In Scandinavia, set Denmark to pumping out longboats, build a royal court there to generate emissaries and to replenish my princely RKs, then concentrate on building up agriculture and trade. Sweden focuses on trade first, agriculture second. As a matter of natural development, Sweden can build landsmenn once you have a keep there. Norway builds immediately towards longboats. Vikings get a valor add in Norway, and can be useful as reinforcements/replacements for your army in Asia. But once I can build longboats in Norway, I focus on building only boats there.

You can’t build better than barques or longboats until the compass is discovered. Longboats are by far superior for your purposes than barques. They only cost about 2/3 the gold that barques do. While barques have 2 defense, as compared to only 1 for a longboat, you primarily want quantity over quality. Because you have so many trade resources, it’s important to spread out your trade route as far and as fast as possible.

You start the game without a single emissary, so it is quite useful to take the time out to build at least one. (Plus, you get the Chamberlain title to give to your Swedish governor from building a royal palace.) Use your princesses to scout out Asian rebels, then marry them off to my governors when they hit 30 years of age. Send your emissary to attempt to bribe Kiev and/or Khazar. Khazar typically has a lot of Steppe cav and horse archers, as well as 2 Royal Khazar cav. This province also has 3 trade resources (Kiev has 2.), so it is well worth the money to bribe and secure it. You can start building boats out of the Black Sea once you have one or both of these provinces, and this will send your income leaping ahead of everyone else.

In Asia, build Slav warriors and woodsmen (the latter in Lithuania) as domestic police forces. You should still use the rebellion/defend strategy to march your way all across Asia, letting one province rebel, while your army stack secures a second province. You can reinforce with landsmenn, then huscarles, from Sweden, in addition to the troops you build in Asia.

By 1135, you should own most of Asia, and have a trade route extending from the Baltic to the Straits of Gibraltar. It is tempting to embroil yourself in foreign affairs at this time. However, what is called for is more of what you did to get to this point, not military adventures against organized factions.

Finish the conquest of the Asian rebels. Bribe Khazar, if you haven’t already. Continue building longboats out of Denmark and Norway, and push your trade route all the way to the Black Sea. You probably have enough troops by this time for all your domestic security concerns, so concentrate now on development, especially trade and agriculture.

Once you have finished the conquest of Asia, you may be tempted to start a fight with the Russians. There is no need, especially since you are probably allied with them at this point. Simply strip the garrison of Smolensk down to 1 unit (presuming this still keeps provincial loyalty above 100%). In a couple of turns the Czar will decide that attacking Smolensk is a good idea. Then you have ample reason to smash him like a bug, invading Novogorod and Finland while counterattacking in Smolensk. Naturally, a lot of the AI factions will drop their alliances with you when you go to war with Russia, but this should not matter much, because you should have your borders well protected by this time.

Conquering the Russians should take no more than 2 or 3 turns. Resume your peaceful development. With your long trade route, you are likely adding 5k or so each year to your treasury, even after you make a full development build. By the time your treasury reaches 20k or so, you may be tempted to “make something happen” again. Don’t do it. Your trade routes may be making gobs of money for you right now, but they are extremely fragile. The moment you go to war with any faction that has a ship, they will blockade your trade route (or break it, by sinking one of your longboats). You will then immediately go from a net income of +10k or so to a loss of 5k to 8k per year.

So, wait for an attack from the Poles or Hungarians. Heavily reinforce Denmark and Khazar to keep any other faction from interfering with your plans. Usually the Poles will invade Lithuania. This is the preferred scenario, since you already have overland access to most of Poland’s territory. Try to ally with the English before this happens, since your least preferred scenario would be a sea battle with them.

Once you have conquered Asia and the Poles, and have sea contact to every province, the rest of the Early game is a foregone conclusion. Build lots and lots of Vikings. All you need to build them is a fort, in any province. Vikings aren’t the best troops, but they are cheap, and far better than most opponents in the Early game. Certainly you should build at least one province each towards feudal sergeants, FMAAs, RKs, archers, bishops, assassins, spies, and mounted sergeants. However, the rest should just pump out Vikings every turn. In this way you will quickly build an overpowering army.

Aside from builds focused on bringing specific unit types online, you should continue to develop your provinces toward trade income. When in doubt, build a better castle. Castle upgrades are typically the most expensive and most timely items available on your build lists. With an advanced castle already built, it is usually quick and easy to upgrade a specific troop type.

Typically, the Hungarians and either the French or Germans, depending on who owns Saxony and surroundings, will enter the fray during your war with the Poles. Typically, none of these factions have much of a navy, so this is excellent for you. Use your sea access to its advantage by preparing killing blows for your enemies. In other words, don’t attack one province at a time—you will get a Papal warning long before you can finish the job of destroying your enemy. Instead, build up your defenses in your bordering provinces, and build stacks of Vikings, along with more advanced troops, in every coastal province. When you have enough, attack simultaneously with overwhelming force in every province you can reach.

The Hungarians, French, Spanish, Almohads, and the Pope are usually very ripe for this type of smash attack from the sea. The Italians, Byzantines, Sicilians, and English are less favorable targets, because they typically have sizable navies that must be dealt with. The Egyptians probably provide you with 6 ports to trade with, so you should minimize contact with them to avoid unnecessary war.

Destroy the Central European factions, and take out the Pope when it is convenient to do so. The Pope actually confers little benefit to you, since you cannot Crusade, so do not hesitate to replace him with a puppet whenever you get excommed. In the meantime, just keep building your Viking armies and attacking each faction in turn en masse, and you will soon claim your Danish victory.